It is perhaps ironic that the man who controlled the broadcast of his image with an iron grip was executed in one of the most widely watched news events of recent times, says Vivian Salama.

Through the 2006 summer war in Lebanon, blogging provided an outlet for Arabs in America to vent their frustrations, anxieties and criticisms of events. It also gave many a sense of reconnecting with other Arabs around the Diaspora, says Vivian Salama.

In late January 2006, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian government announced the closure of Hamas’ new Al Aqsa television network. The station’s demise after only a few weeks on air came as no surprise to those familiar with the tug-of-war that is Palestinian politics. Named in honor of the famous Jerusalem mosque …

An elderly man lays bedridden in his lower middle-class home in Shoubra, a largely Christian neighborhood near the heart of Cairo. Paralyzed for some 14 years following an injury to his spine, the man rarely leaves his home, as doing so has become an unbearable hassle. Until recently, this misfortunate …

(Editor’s Note: This article is one of two personal essays in this issue of TBS, one written by Vivian Salama, a reporter covering the Mubarak campaign, and another written by Usama Najeeb, a staffer working on the media team for that same campaign. Najeeb, a former Adham Center graduate student …